Here’s Why You Shouldn’t Check Your Portfolio Right Now
Market downdrafts tempt people to adjust their investments, but that’s not always a wise choice.
2 min
If you logged on to your brokerage account today and wish you hadn’t, you’re not alone.
BlackRock Chief Executive Larry Fink said Monday the asset manager hasn’t received this many client calls since March 2020, when the pandemic was beginning.
Retail brokerages including Fidelity Investments had technical glitches Monday morning as traffic surged from people trying to check their portfolios and place trades.
Studies have found that the more people look at their 401(k)s, the lower their long-term returns are likely to be.
The S&P 500 drops on almost half of trading days, so checking your portfolio more often means you are more likely to see losses. And there have been lots of losses since President Trump rolled out a series of tariffs last week.
In just two trading days last week, the average 401(k) lost 7% of its value, according to Alight Solutions , which tracks employer retirement plans. Individual investors moved money out of stock-heavy target-date funds and into the relative safety of bonds and cash.
That’s understandable, but not necessarily wise. Here are some things financial advisers say to keep in mind right now:
Be realistic
Now that the S&P 500 is down almost 20% from its peak, many people are realizing that their risk tolerance isn’t as high as they thought it was when markets were up 20%, said Chelsea Ransom-Cooper, chief financial planning officer at Zenith Wealth Partners in New York.
“It’s a great time to level-set and reflect on what you’re comfortable with,” she said. However, if you decide to make changes, you should tweak a little at a time to avoid making emotional decisions you regret later, she said.
Sell strategically
In general, you should avoid the impulse to sell when the value of your investments falls, said Martin Lowenthal, financial adviser in Needham, Mass.
He has been telling his clients to stay the course and advising that they pull money from alternative sources such as life insurance plans if they need liquidity in the short-term.
“You shouldn’t be drawing from depressed assets if you have other places to go for income,” he said.
However, falling stock prices can create opportunities to save on taxes. If you find yourself with stocks or funds that are worth less than what you paid for them, you may be able to recognize the losses for tax purposes. Selling at a loss and reinvesting the money can help offset taxes on future capital gains while remaining invested in the market.
Buy cautiously
There may be reasons to add to investments, financial advisers say, especially if you have been sitting on cash. Cash losses value to inflation, which is expected to rise as companies digest new tariffs.
With markets starting to price in rate cuts , now might be a good time to lock in returns with fixed-rate products such as certificates of deposits or bonds, Ransom-Cooper said.
If you are younger and have a longer investment horizon, you can consider making small investments into the stock market at regular time intervals to take advantage of a potential rebound while managing risk.
“If you are concerned about inflation, you want to make sure that your money is at least trying to keep up,” she said.
Do nothing
This isn’t the first time the market has tested investors’ stomach for risk, and history says it won’t be the last. There was the financial crisis, then there was the pandemic, and “this time, it’s the tariff tantrum,” Lowenthal said.
“I’ve got full faith in the American economy to ride this out,” he said.
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The federal budget has rattled property investors. But the biggest mistake isn’t the tax changes, it’s the conclusion many are drawing from them.
2 min
The recent budget has forced a reckoning for property investors.
Negative gearing now restricted to new residential builds, the CGT discount gone and on paper, the numbers look different.
And many investors are responding by pivoting toward yield, prioritising cash flow over capital growth in a way that property strategists say misses the point entirely.
“The debate has shifted to yield versus growth as if they are opposing forces,” says Abdullah Nouh, founder of Melbourne-based buyers’ agency Mecca Property Group. “But that framing is itself the mistake.”
Nouh, who works with high-net-worth families and investors on long-term acquisition strategy, argues that capital growth remains the primary driver of genuine wealth creation and that the post-budget environment has made quality assets more important, not less.
The numbers make his case plainly. An additional $500 per week in rental income is welcome. A prestige asset appreciating by $1 million over a market cycle is transformative.
These are not equivalent outcomes, and portfolios built around yield at the expense of location and land value tend to generate income while wealth stands largely still.
The more nuanced shift Nouh is seeing among sophisticated investors is a move toward assets where both outcomes can be engineered simultaneously – established homes on substantial land in quality locations, where the existing dwelling can be repositioned, rental returns improved, and the underlying land value compounds independent of what sits on it.
For investors with existing equity, commercial property is also entering the conversation in a more serious way.
Prestige industrial assets, medical centres and long-leased essential retail offer income profiles that residential property in most capital city markets cannot currently match: longer lease terms, tenants covering outgoings, and greater predictability than the residential tenancy cycle.
“The investors who build lasting wealth are rarely the ones who chased yield or growth exclusively,” says Nouh.
“They are the ones who built a strategy they could sustain – one that generated enough income to hold quality assets through multiple cycles while those assets compounded in value.”
The budget has changed the settings. It has not changed the fundamentals.
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